ABSTRACT
In "Zoosex and Other Relationships with Animals," Rebecca Cassidy provides a history of the culture of sex between humans and other animals in the past three decades in the Western world. As Cassidy summarizes, Zoosexuality, a sexual orientation towards animals, is one of a number of identities that emerged on the Internet during the 1980s and 1990s, alongside distinct but related groups of furries, plushies and therians. When a documentary about a zoophile was aired on a British television station in 1999, Cassidy notes that it was defended by the television regulator as "a serious documentary exploring a rare minority sexual orientation". From a Foucauldian perspective, the phrase "interspecies sexual assault" is useful: it avoids terms like "bestiality," "bestials," "zoophilia," "zooerastia," "zoosexuality" and "zoos" that enable individuals to take up sex with nonhuman animals as a perversion, a sexuality, an identity, an orientation or preference, or a medical condition.
